Sacred Text and Sacred Image: France in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.

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Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy*

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.2307/2863019 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 485-532 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Louise Marshall

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Black Death ◽

Bubonic Plague ◽

The Will ◽

Sacred Image ◽

Renaissance Italy

The Infamous Black Death of 1348 signaled the reappearance of bubonic plague in Europe after long centuries of absence. Contemporary accounts vividly describe the shock and horror of universal and indiscriminate mortality. From Tournai, Gilles Li Muisis observed that “no one was secure, whether rich, in moderate circumstances or poor, but everyone from day to day waited on the will of the Lord.” In any given area, between one third to half of the population would die. Worse still, the Black Death was only the beginning of a worldwide pandemic, or cyclical series of epidemics, recurring at intervals of two to twenty years throughout Europe until well into the seventeenth century.

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Architectural framing in the iconostasis as an instrument of commenting on the sacred image

Research and methodological works of the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture ◽

10.33838/naoma.27.2018.44-49 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 44-49

Author(s):

S. Olianina

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Fifteenth Century ◽

The Balkans ◽

Multilevel Structure ◽

Christian Origins ◽

Sacred Image ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

Written Sources

Before the seventeenth century, the icons in the Ukrainian iconostasis did not have frames as an arch or a blind arcade. The epistyles with images of Deesis of fourteenth – sixteenth century have not frames at all or the figures are divided by the rectangular pictorial frames. However, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the icons of apostles in a Deesis row had already framing by carved frames like as the blind arcade. This practice quickly spreads and becomes the rule for the representation of apostles at the iconostasis throughout the seventeenth century. The Christian origins of tradition to decorate sacral images by blind arcade to be continue from Byzantium. It is very important that this design of the icons is characteristic of the Byzantine templons. The epistyles of templons from the twelfth – fifteenth century are mostly framing by blind arcade. The same principle of decoration is passed to the Balkans, where the blind arcade also is fixed in the design of the Deesis row. I argue that the blind arcade in the Ukrainian iconostasis in the design of the Deesis row comes from the Balkans The introduction of frames in the form of a blind arcade for icons of the Deesis row created compositional parallels between Ukrainian iconostasis and the iconostasis of the Balkans. This unity of the used compositional formulas reinforced the relationship of the Ukrainian iconostasis with the Balkan, and visually showed its Byzantine origins. On the basis of artistic and written sources, I demonstrate that blind arcade emphasized the eschatological meanings of the Deesis row. It was also a kind of marker that indicated the presence of this row in the multilevel structure of the monumental Ukrainian iconostasis of the seventeenth century.

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L'oratorio della Madonna del Piano a Sesto Fiorentino

10.36253/978-88-8453-874-1 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Carla Milloschi

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

20Th Century ◽

Fourteenth Century ◽

Science And Technology ◽

New Science ◽

The People ◽

History Of ◽

The Subject ◽

Sacred Image ◽

Madonna And Child

The Oratorio della Madonna del Piano stands in the area of the new Science and Technology Centre of Florence University, in the municipality of Sesto Fiorentino. The first part of this study traces the history and life of the oratory within the territorial context of Sesto. Consequently, it addresses the subject of the fourteenth-century image of the Madonna and Child that was venerated here, the construction of the original tabernacle and that of the seventeenth-century chapel, analysing the historic, artistic and iconographic elements of the frescoes. The second part of the book recounts the history of devotion to the Madonna del Piano, and the results of a survey carried out in 2001 among the people of Sesto Fiorentino, with interviews on life in Val di Rose and on devotion to this sacred image during the 20th century. The work is concluded by a presentation of the restoration of the architectural structure and of that of the frescoes inside the oratory, carried out between 2000 and 2001.

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